abandoned blueberry farm

A couple years ago I was talking with the grower who supplies spring garden transplants for the co-op. He was telling me about places to get free fruit trees and berry bushes that “just had to be dug up and hauled away.” I was skeptical, but I listened further as he told me about an abandoned blueberry farm on county property. All I needed was a ladder, he said, and to not care about bugs and heat. I continued the conversation, but shrugged off the blueberries.

A few days ago my friend A. called to tell me about the same abandoned blueberry farm. He had also heard about it from the plant grower, but unlike me A. had gone out to the patch and seen the berries a few years ago. He didn’t pick any then because they weren’t ripe, and he never went back that year or the next. He did go back a few days ago. His report to me got my curiosity boiling, and I was ready to go whenever. Yesterday morning A. called with an update – berries were looking ripe.

I wasn’t able to go with him, but he was kind enough to give me directions to the place. After work, Kristin and I loaded up a 12 quart stock pot, a couple small containers and a sheet and drove out to the place. Battling rush hour traffic was a horror show (I rarely drive), but after 20 or so minutes we managed to get to the parking lot near the berry plot.

To get to the berries we followed what seemed like directions on a treasure map. Turn left at the old house foundation, right at the trail fork, look left for a downed tree and go straight ahead into a clearing. My friend told me I wouldn’t believe it when I saw it, that it was so out of place and out of the context of the rest of the area. That is how I knew we were there.

Kristin and I were talking about something when we entered the clearing. Mid-sentence I looked up and practically yelled “berries!”

We stood at the beginning of a 1/2 acre of 10 to 12 foot tall blueberry bushes, arranged in perfect rows in what looked like staggered plantings of various varieties. The bushes were definitely old, maybe 30 or 40 years old, and most certainly abandoned. They hadn’t been pruned or cut back in quite sometime. But the great thing was that there were ripe berries and plenty of them.

After gazing and grazing for a few minutes, deciding where we might start, we walked down a random row and spread out the sheet. I immediately started shaking the branches. Berries fell everywhere, landing on the sheet and everywhere around it. Berries bounced off heads and shoulders.

Kristin scrambled to pick them up as they fell. This quickly gave way to the two of us shaking opposite sides of the row and then gathering all the berries. The berries were everywhere. We couldn’t pick them up fast enough.

With the berries came all sorts of debris – twigs, old leaves, flaking bark – and my sweaty skin was soon covered in an itchy coating. Along with the debris, we managed to shake loose all sorts of creatures. Small flies, crickets, inch worms and all sizes of spiders came down on the sheet and on us. We swatted and flicked them away as we loaded up with the little blue treats.

Kristin sampled way more berries than I did, probably because I was still in disbelief that this place existed. I still can’t believe that we weren’t surrounded by other people picking. I kept saying to myself, surely people understand what is back here, surely the county has some people come pick this, surely we will get yelled at when we leave the clearing. But the patch obviously goes unpicked by anyone except random scavengers like us. In the next few weeks there will be enough berries to fill several freezers. Most will go unpicked.

After just an hour of work, Kristin and I hauled off about 10 quarts of berries. It doesn’t sound like much, but think of 20 pints of berries stacked on a grocery store shelf. That’s a lot of berries for an hours work. At the end of our picking session, looking at a full stock pot of blueberries, us sweaty, itchy and giddy, we wondered how long it would take before we would both be out here again, on hands and knees, piling berries into our little plastic containers.